This sermon emphasizes the profound relationship with God as our Father that is established through the Holy Spirit at the moment of spiritual birth. It highlights the importance of recognizing God as our Father through the lens of Calvary, rejecting the notion of revisiting past traumas for inner healing, and embracing the new identity as a child of God with supernatural possibilities. The sermon challenges believers to live out their new vocation in the kingdom of God with a transcendent perspective, understanding the violent spiritual battle for their place in the kingdom and the necessity of a desperate, violent pursuit of God's purpose.

Fatherhood but a specific relation brought in by the Holy Spirit entered into our life at a very definite time when our spirit within us knew not just because somebody said it but God is my father. Jesus in teaching men to pray said when you pray, pray our Father which art in heaven. That brings Calvary in. When you begin to pray that prayer, you recognize apart from Calvary, he can never be your father in the sense that Jesus is talking about. It's not just a general but he is our father. I have been born again. That's the reason the silliness of the inner healing crowd that want to go back into when I was first born where the prayer carried me back to my mother's womb and find out if there's any kind of a traumatic something or if mama had to stump my head on the floor or daddy got mixed up with the masons or something else. Let me tell you, when I was birthed of God, he is my father. He is the father of the new creation. A history of experience began. That ended the old. The Bible, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament, the Old Testament has to be crucified to go back beyond that point, to deal with my life, to go back beyond. When I was born again, the deal with my life is against everything this Bible teaches. When I was birthed of God and that kingdom, that life come in, that was a life of God and God became in that moment, my father, not in the general sense, but my Father. Now, God sent that, sent forth the spirit of the Son into our hearts according to Paul in Galatians 4, 6, crying Abba Father. When did that happen to you? Has it ever happened to you? If it hasn't, then you're not there. We are not now a God, a far-off that a man's afraid of, but a God that's in our heart, a God that lives in us. Father. Now, if I did wrong, I didn't much want to meet my father, but I wasn't, I didn't have a fear of my father that kept me from his presence. The fear of him was there that kept me right. And he'd roll over in his grave to listen to these liberal folks that tell you, you can't make folks do right. Amen. These people tell you, you can't. I didn't know where it is at all. You can make people do right. But there was a fear there, but not a fear of somebody, a far-off. I love to be near him and wanted to be with him. And now with this spirit in our heart, crying Abba Father, this is the kingdom of God. When we're born of the spirit, there's a new relation, but third, the kingdom of heaven is a new constitution. I'm not talking about bylaws. I'm not talking about now articles of faith. We are constituted a new, with a new set of capacities, which make possible things that were never possible before. We, there's a life come into us. That life has made possible to us things that were never possible before that never could happen. The child of God, the member of the kingdom of heaven is the embodiment of a miracle. That is one of the greatest miracles of all time is to be birthed of God. It's rejected by the religious world. For the most part, the ecumenical is born out of the fact that just being religious makes you a child of God. Everything becomes a church, but everything isn't the church. It is born from above. And if this child of God that's been born again is a miracle, they're supernatural possibilities in every human that's been born of God. Think about it. We haven't had a lot of it. We've been more discouraged not to believe. We've had the fundamentalists that are so afraid of going too far. He went nowhere. And a Pentecostal crowd that had become so institutionalized that they've lost the fact that we are supernatural people birthed from above. But there is possibilities in every human that's born of God. That's beyond the ability to think. Amen. Some of us know something of it. We do not know all the forces which have been on the destruction of a child of God. I do know the Bible said we're kept by the power of God. I do not know. You do not know. I think it'll be something in that day when we know as we're when we look back across life and see what we overcome, how we live when we ought to be dead, that we didn't know anything about the possibilities of this life. Some of us know something about that power. Some of us here this morning know something about it. Our very survival is because God has exercised his power in our behalf, kept by the power of God. What a wonderful thing. As we walk possibilities in us, when we ought to be dead, we're still living. When we ought to went under, we kept going. When everything else failed, yet we made it. We're kept by the power of God. There's a new constitution in the kingdom of God. The inception of a child of God is a miracle. How can a man be born again? There is no answer to that, except God does it. But if God does it, it's an evident thing in that life. It isn't something you have to ask about. He that has been born of God has to witness within himself. There's nothing more real than being born again. The truth and proof of the gospel is said here that when a person comes and his birth of God in this new life, then the whole thinking of life changes with that. Amen. There's a different, listen, how can this man give his flesh to eat? John six 52. That is how can the child of God be supported throughout without anything here on this earth to help him? How can it be? How can he make it? How can he be supported without it? Just like Israel in that desert. How can such a thing be? How can 3 million people live in a desert where there's no water, no food, no factories, no nothing. Yet they never went naked. They ate every day. They have plenty of water to drink. How can such a thing be? I'm telling you that in this kingdom where God is our father, there is a new life. There is a new vocation and this life is a miracle and everything concerning the Christian life is a miracle. We're not only born for the power of God, but we're kept by the power of God. You can no more keep yourself than you could save yourself. Unless you walk in the spirit, you will fail in this life. It's as sure as the sparks fly upward. How can we be supported? No answer except God doesn't. If God does not help, then the child of God will go under. You cannot make it if God does not help you unless you're supported by the power of God. The consummation of the child is a miracle. Listen to it. First Corinthians 1535. How are the dead raised up and with what manner of body do they come? Their answer is the same. God alone does it. If God doesn't raise us, then we won't be raised. The whole matter is a miracle from the start to the finish. This life, that's the reason no man can survive on his own. You cannot survive this life apart from the church and the people of God. Once you are isolated from that, then it's over with with you. Just a matter of time when we isolate ourselves from the source because we're kept by the power of God. It's a new constitution above and beyond the highest level of human abilities. This life, this kingdom, the kingdom of God, birth, the new birth, a new life, a new life. Father, the kingdom of God is a vocation. It is something for which to live, something in which to serve and something to bring into operation. It's a vocation. Not only when I was born of God did I become a part of his purpose, but I've become the means through which that purpose is propagated. It flows through us. The vocation, it is something, listen, to give our life to. Number one, it is something for which to live. It's something in which to serve. Life has a meaning to people that are really born again. When you have to deal with people to involve them in the work of God, it's a real signal that you ought to look and examine because it's very likely they've never got into the kingdom. If it's hard to interest them in the things of the kingdom, then they're probably not in it. It's not too hard to interest human beings in human life. You're born again, you have a life, then life is important to you. If you're born the first time, rather, and a person has been born of God, he's moved into a realm to serve. And when you find the people that are human that's hard to ever get to do anything, then that's a real symptom that that kingdom is not a reality of that life. It may have been at one time, but something has happened to that life. The ideas of life have all changed with it. It becomes this kingdom, the spear and means of a new life, ministry and purpose. The child of God knows why he is alive. There's so much today dealing with, you know, you discover yourself and high self-esteem. It's got into the church. It's worked its way into the church as a tool of evangelism. Psychology has become a great part of the thinking of the church. And it has to deal with self more than it has to deal with God. And it's trying to teach you how that you can be everything you want to be. But all of that teaching in the fine line, God is only a helper somewhere on the sideline. But that one that's birthed of God knows that this is the reason I live. My whole life is dependent upon my father that has brought me into this life. And the truly born again child of God has discovered behind everything else that which is divine, has divine intent and meaning behind everything in life. He's discovered what really has a meaning to life. It isn't a matter of things. You know, yesterday we were in the mall and I wonder sometime why, but as I watched the people scrambling around buying things for people that didn't want them in the first place, they're going to be the biggest parade back out there when it's over. Our folks changing or trying to get the money for whatever you gave them. And we're all caught up in it. But as I was waiting on the rest of them together, I just think I just come from Africa, back in the Somba tribe way back there where those people haven't traveled maybe five miles in the whole of their life, have nothing, absolutely nothing, not hardly enough to eat, no transportation, none of the things that we have, life is reduced to nothing but survival. And as I look at the scrambling around after things, one of the big sales is a sale on teaching us how not to get too fat. Amen. We spend billions of dollars on doctors so that we don't eat too much. Out there, two-thirds of the world don't have anything to eat. I'm just thinking something has happened to us as to why we're here. Amen. Something has happened to the church and it's discovery of why we're here folks. Why? My God, we're here as a kingdom of God to bring it into operation. I can tell you what I was looking at fanning around me yesterday had nothing to do with that kingdom. Absolutely nothing to do with that kingdom. There's no operation of it here. It's just a matter that I've got to get somebody something because I know they're going to get me something. Amen. I don't want to be embarrassed by not giving them something I know. And there's a very great pressure on people to do that. There's a great pressure. I didn't know it till yesterday, but 50% of all sales for stores and companies in this country are made at Christmas. 50%. I mean, they can't survive without that. It has to be a hype. All of it has to be. And I thought here we are to set into operation the kingdom of God. Somehow we've lost our reason for being. Somehow we're not realizing that we are part of a kingdom that that trivial step has nothing to do with. This is an eternal world that we are part of. The child of God knows that. The kingdom of heaven is a new vocation, a new life, and a new purpose. And the kingdom of heaven, thank God, is from above. I'm so glad to be able to tell you. It is transcendent in every way. I want to hang around here a minute this morning before we leave this house. The kingdom of heaven is transcendent in every way. It is from above. We've been born again from above. You know and I know that all life returns to its source one way or another. Everything eventually returns to its source. And this kingdom, it's a life, it's a purpose, it's a vocation, it's something for me to give my life to. And that kingdom is from above. As I thought on this, it is transcendent. It's always above the natural that lives and brings life to a higher level. When I was born again, when you was born again, if you were truly birthed of God, then life took on a meaning. You were delivered from the thinking of the things about you. I look at this nation today, and it's a heartbreaking thing to see where the morals have gone in the nation. As a boy, there was more of the Holy Spirit operating. Today, when the highest officials of the state are proud to give titles of honorary uh homosexuals, we've come a long ways folks. Honorary lesbians, when those kind of things get to be an honor to us, we've lost something somewhere. But I'll tell you, it's not lost out there. That's always the way it's been when there wasn't any restraint on it. It is when our thoughts were transcendent. When it was when ours was set on things above. It's when we walked in the kingdom of God and our affections were on things above that there was a restraint on the evil that's as natural in the unregenerate as it is in as this ought to be in a born again believer. It's just as natural for that flesh to go downward. There's no bottom to it. Amen. The less restraint on it, the deeper, the deeper, the deeper it sinks. It never stops. It's always inventing new ways of its degradation. But, but with us, it is above. It's a transcendent life. It's from above. It'll always gravitate back to its source. When a person is born again, their, their morals change immediately. That life is lifted to a higher level. What they began to think was just a natural for a human. They recognize immediately that is man's depravity that's brought him there, but being birthed in God's life in him, he begins to think like God. If this new life works in us, it will be lifting us up, pulling us back to God. Every day we'll find ourselves becoming more like God. If this life works in us, being born again is something that's evidenced by the community. It's evidenced by those about us because his life is constantly forever lifting back. I know that the rapture is going to take place in a moment in the twinkle of an eye, but somehow that rapture has been taking place in us ever since we've been born again. If we truly are born at birth of God, then this life has been lifting us to higher thinking, higher levels of thinking. I believe in everything about my life. Amen. It has to be. There's certain things that I just cannot even be a part of in this world. There's many things that we can't be part of. I'm not talking about just naked sin, but the place that it's gone to and the thing that it embraces has brought us. I tell you folks, when you look at the way things are going, if I didn't believe in God and wasn't born and knew it had to be this way, I'd be a very, very despondent human being this morning as I look at it. But thank God there's a life lifting of us. First of all, you begin to see that this world isn't your home. If this life is there, you begin to realize then the concern can be blunted. The reprobate mind that you see that's come to take charge of affairs. I just reading in a paper of this week, how that the pressure's already begun to revoke the anti-sodomy laws in the state of Texas, and folks from California were writing us and telling us they've done been through that. And what's happened in the schools admitted that all of that is gone, but that is a place where we are. That's a public officials that we have that are desiring that move. I look at that. I thought, my God, our children are going to have to go there. We're creating a world, but all I'm here in the world, but we're not on this world. That is the first mark of being born again to recognize that we are here, but we're not, we're in the world. First of all, it was our home until we were born again. Now we don't belong here. Our citizenship is in heaven now in a very imperfect way. Consider what the prophets were talking about and what you and I have come in touch with, and let us see for just a moment here in closing, what can be missed? Look at these words, the law and the prophets were until John from that time, the gospel of the kingdom is preached and every man entereth violently and the kingdom suffered violently. Luke 16, 16 says, every man entered violently into it from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffered violence and the violent take it by force. That's Matthew 11 and 12. Suffer violence. That doesn't mean that the kingdom permits of violence. No, no. I didn't want to be saying it all. It means it calls for violence. It's men and women of violence that ever make it into it. It is men and women spiritually violent that get into it and make it through it all. This is the spirit of citizenship in that kingdom. It is a violent spirit. This is not merely an appeal to be earnest, nor it certainly means seeing what a tremendous thing the kingdom is. What an immense loss will be suffered if we don't take it seriously. But you see, Jesus is speaking in the midst of things that are constantly opposing, constantly opposing. He's speaking right in the middle of it. Listen to it. The whole organized system expressing prejudice. He said on one occasion, whoa, I'm being scribes and Pharisee hypocrites because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men. There's everything from devils to men to obstruct your entrance into the kingdom of God. Amen. Everything to obstruct you to stop it. If you can't be stopped, you will be stopped. If you can't be him, you will be hindered. Saddam Hussein is, is sticking his entire hope on the fact that if as a war, when the casualties start, that we don't have the stomach for that anymore, that we don't have the will to stand up that remains to be seen. But this is saying to you and I, that we're standing in the midst of opposing forces. Everything from devils to men are trying to keep you out of there. Hell is made up his mind, even though you got him, but you're not going to make it. And if you're not in, you're not going to give him, but the kingdom suffer violence. It's a man, a woman that recognized to lose. This is to lose everything that's worthwhile to miss heaven, to miss God, to wind up in hell. If you can be hindered, you will be. There's a great deal more in the purpose of God for our lives than we've ever imagined. If we're to enter into that violence has to characterize our lives, we must desperately mean business. We must come to the place where we say, Lord, I'm set upon everything that you mean in Christ. I can tell you, pressure is going to come from every direction. I believe it's going to be that we, that believe in Christ, the truth, and that there's no answer outside of this Bible, that you can't add anything to it or take anything away from it, that we'll survive only by the power of God. I believe the greatest enemy is going to be that Pentecostal ecumenical. The pressure is going to be put on us because I've preached for 20 years that that ecumenical was nothing as long as his old dead religious systems, that the life of God had been born so long, they wouldn't recognize it if it passed. But I said, the day that it takes on a Pentecostal context, it'll head straight to demonism. I'm seeing it happen. The greatest enemies of the Bible today is a Pentecostal ecumenical. That today is making everything that church, I can tell you, if we survive, that believe this gospel, we'll survive by the power of the living God. If we're to enter into that, violence has to characterize it. How easily many are sidetracked simply because they're not desperate. They're not desperate. Amen. The only way we'll ever come into the purpose of God is to be men of violence to those who say, by God's grace, nothing or no one is going to stand in my way. I am going to be a part of that raptured church. I'm going to be a part of that first resurrection. No man, not even Paul, knew all that was going to know. Paul was constantly seeking further revelations. He died, said that I might know it. He saw beyond that which cannot be seen. And he saw what can be missed if we're just neglectful. I've never, since I've been saved, understood a backslider. I've never been able, I know what happened because I've been here too long, but I've never been able to understand a man or a woman that got in here and wanted back out there. I've never been able for the life of me to understand what out there. I've listened to testimonies of men and women that said in their testimony, I was bound by drugs. I was selling myself. Everything I had was going down. Then Jesus lifted me out and to find them back into that hog bin is more than my mind. But yet, but yet, though I can't understand it, I can tell you how it happens. If you're not a desperate person, if you're not a violent human, unless you know they are opposing factors, they are that they are the Pharisees that still live and close that kingdom and won't let men in it. There are devils and men and problems and situations. And if you can be knocked out, you're going to be knocked out. The violent, take it by force. You see a person's in, out, up, down pretty soon that can never work again. It's like the temper of that metal. You heat it enough times, it won't stop it anymore. The kingdom of heaven suffered violence, violent people, only those that realize what those first people missed because they didn't hear what those prophets said. Now he says to you, he that hath an ear, let him hear because they still saying the same thing. That kingdom is Christ. That entrance is a new birth. It's a miracle to be in it. And it's a miracle to stay in it. Stand with me here this morning. Hallelujah.